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  • From: Kevin Riley <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>
  • To: B Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Unpointed
  • Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:00:00 +1000



On 18/06/2010 3:31 AM, K Randolph wrote:
Randall and James:

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:16 AM, Randall Buth<randallbuth AT gmail.com> wrote:

When interpreting the MT, it is always good to remember that
the masoretes knew Hebrew.

That’s not the question. The question is how well did they know Biblical
Hebrew?

First of all, the Masoretes were human and their pointing a human
development. As that popular modern paraphrase of Romans 3:23a states, “To
err is human”, therefore we cannot assume that their points are without
error.
b-hebrew
But surely the original writer, and every copier and/or editor from then until now, also was human? Does that mean we must give up on the Hebrew (and obviously Greek as well) Scriptures because they were written by humans, and therefore in the end, to every question, all we can say is that we don't really know? I may be misreading your posts over the years, but it seems as if you want to remove all tools for helping us to understand the Hebrew Scriptures - later Hebrew, cognate languages, tradition, much of history, linguistics, etc - and leave us with just the bare text. But if we take your proverb "to err is human" seriously, can we even trust that?

Kevin Riley




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